


Tales of the 21st Century

by Arthur0098



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Cyborgs, Kzinti, Kzinti Wars, Star Trek References, Star Trek World War III, Terra Nova - Freeform, World War III
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24324712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arthur0098/pseuds/Arthur0098
Summary: Before the Federation, before Starfleet, right after first contact with the Vulcans, there was United Earth. They did not come to its position through complacency, and isolation, they clawed their way to greatness through a century of blood and struggle against impossible odds. The Third World War, the Kzinti Wars, the Terra Nova expedition, Earth's cargo service, the actions of the 21st century lay the groundwork of the proud nation that would come to be.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	1. Cyberzombie

**Author's Note:**

> The Third World War was fought with more exotic weapons than power armor, nuclear weapons, or augments. They needed cheap ways for the soldier to survive radiation and bullets alike, but most of all, they needed warm bodies.  
> It didn't matter how injured they were or what nationality they were, whether their cells were collapsing or they'd taken a bullet in the gut. All were candidates for the refurbished cybernetic infantry.  
> Flesh held together with chemicals and steel marched out into battle. Machinery was wired into their brains, crawling in their minds, sapping their free will, and telling them to kill.
> 
> But deep down, a human heart still beat.

The American had been captured in Afghanistan. He was part of a New United Nations task force attempting to prevent Eastern Coalition forces from getting ahold of the oil stockpiles.

The war was nearing it’s twenty-year mark. It was now 2046. The war had been going for longer than he’d been around. Round and round the conflict had gone, initially low-key then rising to larger and larger heights. The last decade had gotten the larger powers directly involved, brush-fire wars turning into open conflict.

But initially there were no new battlegrounds. It was the same old song. First World powers using the Middle East as a battle ground for a decade or two.

The American knew a guy who swore up and down he’d found a “Mission Accomplished” banner in a dumpster in the motor pool. A mural for Khan Noonien Singh was found a few klicks down the road.

And they’d been shot at by a sniper with a 1942 Lee-Enfield rifle a few days after deployment.

They’d said a drawn out war was unlikely, that no one had the factories or the resources to fight for very long anymore. Only as long as World War II at most, they said.

The Coalition, ECON, was fighting a push from Russian divisions in the north, what little the Russian Federation could send. Most of their military was occupied with holding the line in Siberia and the line near Moscow. With the Scandanavian Troubles and the factions forming in the Balkans, and the rest of the mess of Southeast Europe, they couldn’t do much.

Former NATO powers were able to send in more troops, pushing from the west. Their numbers weren’t too high, being occupied elsewhere themselves, but their power armor put them on an equal footing with the drug-fueled ECON troops, their genetically-engineered soldiers, and their Augment hand-me-downs from the Eugenics Wars.

Few were willing to admit, or even consider that the UN would probably be forced to use similar equipment as time wore on. Already, they had their own genetically-engineered supersoldiers being deployed elsewhere.

No one wanted to consider how bad the war would get.

American Hauser hovertanks engaged ECON T-2034 MBTs across the plains, while British Tempest fighters dueled old MiG-41s in the sky. Occasionally a super-heavy tank would roar through, railguns shrieking according to the whims of its cybernetic brain. A flying fortress might come crashing down, its hover units and hydrogen bags holed by a Sidewinder or a K-13.

Lasers from the navy lanced invisibly across tens of kilometers, cutting down cruise missiles and driving away observation planes. 

Submarines, manned and unmanned, dueled under the waves, like a fight in a warehouse with no lights on, but everyone has a flashlight. 

Tall and tough men and women, their reflexes and senses genetically enhanced, waded through enemy troops on both sides, frequently being overwhelmed by “inferior” normal humans in power armor, with sniper rifles, or simply being bombed.

  
  


The American had been fighting in a green valley when he was captured.

They'd been marching through the mountains, their gear set to low power to avoid detection and save juice. They had their automatic drug injectors on low as well, except the chemicals needed to keep them moving. It was expensive stuff.

When they started getting tired, a mixture would swirl and all thoughts of depression and exhaustion would vanish, leaving a happy and aggressive feeling. They’d been trained to resist the feeling of invincibility that came with it.

Rapid progress had been made since the last war. Drugs made the troops easier to control, allowed them to hang in a fight longer without those irritants of pain, exhaustion, shell-shock and trauma.

Suddenly the path opened up on a valley. There was a little hamlet down in the center of the green, overseeing the crops that had been grown there.

The troops had been stunned. It was so pretty, so safe and tranquil for a long moment.

Then the mortars opened up. The German man next to the American disappeared.

The American dove to the side, rolling to avoid a trap, then went into a crouch in the ditch.

" _ Ambush _ !" Rang over the comms. Bodies were in the road.

He raised his battle rifle over his cover and fired blindly down into the valley.

The squad dug in, switching on their equipment and returning fire. A single woman carried a heavy machine gun, carrying the grip in one hand and feeding it with the other. A crew of four would normally be needed.

There was the  _ crack _ of a large caliber gun in the distance, and she pitched backwards. A Simonov anti-material rifle a century older than her had taken her head off.

The American ignored the sight, and switched on his scopes, only for his vision to fill up with a wash of interference.

His thermals and scanners were all messed up, he couldn’t see a damn thing.

Enemy electronic countermeasures had targeted his position.

He ducked down to repair it, first resetting his HUD, then smacking the side of his brain bucket for good measure.

His power armor was tough, better than the old PASGT gear some of the locals used, but he was suffering just as many problems as his ancestors had. He pulled off the helmet, rooting through the complex circuits. 

Orders were shouted around him, and the rattle of enemy guns drew closer and closer.

He just managed to clear the interference when that bastard with the rifle butt clocked him over the head.

ECON was pretty merciful at first. They rounded up a number of the UN troops in the engagement and didn't immediately execute them as rumors had said. 

They took away the armor of course, exposing the UN troops to the arid environment; though at first that just meant hot during the day and still going to the bathroom every five minutes, another tradition for soldiers in the Middle East. There was an old joke that if you weren’t doing that, you were dehydrated.

There weren’t any sicknesses going around camp, their sanitary conditions weren't too bad. He and his buddies had been forced to eat their own rations, as their captors didn’t give them much.

Merciful is a relative term, after all.

They transferred the UN troops away from the Middle East, deeper into ECON territory, towards geographical China.

The troopers didn’t know what would happen to them. There were all sorts of optimistic and pessimistic stories that circulated.

The latter was what was inflicted on this poor American.

  
  


One day a uniformed ECON officer had the American’s barracks turned out. They were a mixture of British, US, Israeli, and German soldiers, all a bit ragged, but standing tall. They’d been treated humanely if nothing else, they had little reason to forget ceremony.

Not for much longer.

The officer looked at them like they were slabs of meat, all sorts of curious views. The prisoners were surprised they weren’t told to show off their teeth.

He picked several soldiers, and they were dragged off. Their comrades nearly started a riot over it, but it didn't do any good.

The American preferred not to remember much of what happened next. Not that he did for a long time.

  
  


He remembered his uniform being taken, being strapped down on some surgical table, the stab of a needle, before everything stopped making sense.

Pain, lots of pain, a lot of it without anesthesia. He was pretty sure they only sedated him so he would struggle less.

Swirling images, sounds in his mind, terrible feelings, and a sensation like falling into a pool.

The next thing he “knew” was standing at attention. He wasn’t quite aware, it was like he was half-asleep.

Cameras. Cameras all around him. In front of him dim figures, just blurs he couldn’t identify. A number of men and women around him, all of them looked familiar…

They were all at attention, standing in rows, in a square. None of them could move.

Then someone ranting in English. He couldn’t understand it. The kid from New York just couldn’t process it.

A figure was brought out in front of him, in front of the...unit?

She was a woman in a ragged uniform. He thought he recognized her from a German unit.

Something on her outfit was blinking. It was irritating, but the American couldn't do anything about it. He didn't really seem to care. It was a strange feeling. 

He knew he cared, but also that he didn't. All that seemed important was standing at this position, and yet he knew something was wrong. 

But he couldn't figure it out. 

That blinking kept irritating him. But he couldn't do anything.

Blinking. Blinking. Blinking.

The woman did a bunch of exercises for the blur standing beside her. Pretty simple stuff, salute, run in place, march, stand at attention…

Abruptly she turned toward the American.

Blinking again. That damn light.

She walked forward, right toward him.

He didn't care, did he?

Did he?

All that mattered was standing still. The thinking parts of his brain scooted along like an old PC.

She grabbed his throat, and he tried to struggle, but he couldn't, he just stood there.

He was about to black out when there was a bark and the woman released him.

The American found himself gasping for breath and had completely forgotten why. The woman was out of sight and out of mind.

“ _ See, they don’t even react to injury! They’ll keep marching into your guns until they fall! _ ”

When the blur gave orders, the whole unit did as he asked.

The German reappeared in front of the cameras, and turned around, and something finally clicked in the American’s brain.

The lights weren't on her uniform. The  _ blinking lights were embedded in her. _

Her head was encased in some sort of frame, with connections disappearing into her skull.

There were other modules at specific points on her body, on her back, at her elbows, maybe her knees, he couldn’t look down.

  
  


And he noted another blinking light in a camera lens.

Blinking coming right from his reflection.

There were implants on every member of the unit.

  
  


“ _...And they are all ours now, UN! Your troops are ours! _ ” he finally processed.

The ECON officer was commanding a horde of UN cyber slaves.

A number of the drones fell down twitching around then.

This was the rapid progress made since the last war. Sometimes they didn’t even need drugs. All they needed was a scalpel and a handful of wires and chips.

  
  


Their brains had been rewired. Someone went in with a medical device and inserted chips and wires. They crossed some neurons here and there, until the UN soldier was completely unable to control anything. They were rewired to be perfectly obedient soldiers, perfectly obedient slaves. They felt no pain, and would march into machine gun fire, radiation fields, or areas with biological weapons. Everyone called them cyberslaves, or some variety of that. 

They were a great tool of psychological warfare. The machine in their brain processed the information, and the body carried it out. They would march at their former friends, attack anything their handlers told them. It didn't matter what the personality truly wanted, the wires told them they wanted it. They were marched around like puppets.

But does a puppet ever know it's being controlled? And if it does, can it do anything about it?

How does the puppet severe the strings?

  
  


The American's memory was all over the place. The grunt remembered manual labor, experiments, weapons tests, all sorts of things. He was lucky in a way. They wanted his unit for testing, rarely frontline service.

He sometimes dreamed, sometimes he hoped he was dreaming.

His memory only snapped back into lucidity a few times. The implants weren't total, and the human brain is a durable thing. Neuroplasticity kept screwing with the bad guy's plans as it tried to restore the brain to a normal operating procedure.

He could recall attempts to escape, to pull the implants out, just screaming endlessly a few times, all sorts of things.

These usually happened at random, or when he was forced to escort new arrivals and some of them had American flags or spoke in New York accents. Maybe when someone accidentally pulled a wire.

And when they shipped him out.

He heard ECON had been running low on troops. Considering the way they threw them away he wasn't sure of that.

But having your own troops charging at you was definitely a morale breaker.

  
  


The battle was just a blur for him, just a mess. He never quite remembered it.

Maybe the machine gun burst through his chest messed him up.

Maybe the tactical nuke fried a few of his memory circuits.

It left a massive sunburn on him, he should've been dead. Had he been at Chernobyl a few decades earlier, he would have been dead.

But science had marched on.

When they recovered him, he was still breathing, and therefore perfect for their purposes.

"Ah, a loyal party man for him to hold on this long," they said, "he will be perfect!"

That was the normal induction process for a cyberzombie. They couldn't even tell he was American. Though he doubted they'd care.

This was when he'd shifted from a cyber slave to a cyberzombie.

  
  


His cells were dying, his entire body was falling apart from radiation poisoning, not to mention thermal injury. But ECON needed warm bodies and so did the other factions.

He woke up in a lab, staring at the ceiling. His vision was more like a digital display. There was actual static.

"The brain is still intact,” someone said, “All combat experience, reflexes, that's all in there."

"Another soldier, then,” another voice said, “Cyberslaves were such a waste! Perfectly good soldiers and you just use them as cannon fodder? It’s a clever psychological tactic, but jeez...”

Someone in surgical garb stepped into his vision, studying something above him, “At least we’ll have something to work with. Everything’s already pretty delicate in there; if we had to insert our own stuff, we might have torn it up like the last one.”

“I don’t think that’s a concern right now, anyway. Look at the rest of him. We’ll need a full suite of implants, not to mention the stuff we’ll need to keep the rest of his organs intact.”

“‘Stuff’? That’s real articulate.”

“Ha ha. It’s been a long day and I’m tired. Sue me.”

“Hey, is his brain activity up?”

“Ah. Put him under and prep for surgery. Hey, are you gonna finish that donut?”

  
  


He passed in and out of consciousness.

Several men and women were eating sandwiches nearby, his head had fallen to the side.

“Did you hear about Colonel Green?”

“Yeah. Biting the yanks in the ass right about now.”

“He got ahold of a bunch of their cyberzombies and augments, I heard. Been using them in his campaigns.”

“They’ve made some already? Well, even if NATO’s got em ours are still better.”

“Former NATO powers. They broke up a while ago, remember?”

“Of course I do, I’m not an idiot! It’s just easier to say than Norway, France, New British Republic, Southeast Spanish Confederacy...”

  
  


_ We made...these things too? _ The American’s thoughts drifted back and forth. Everything jerked as if someone had pressed the skip button on an old-style DVD player.

One of the mechanics was standing over him, still holding a sandwich. She was knocking against something on his head that clanged loudly.

“Wonder what the Brazillian zoms look like. Everyone’s got them these days.”

The American could scarcely believe it. Nor could he believe the clock on the wall when he woke up. He was standing at attention in another lab, perhaps the same one. On the opposite wall was a large clock.

" _ 2050 _ " was all his injured brain could make out. The letters, had he even spoken the language, were impossible to read.

Had it been that long? It had felt like days.

  
  


The clock suddenly jumped forward one year with a wash of static.

“ _ 2051 _ ”.

There were strange computer symbols in his vision, no text. A HUD like his old one appeared.

The machine in his brain told him to stay still, and not move. It had changed, becoming more active than it had before.

_ When did you move in here? _ He thought in a lucid moment.

  
  


"So why are we building these? Wouldn't robots be cheaper?" Someone asked out of view. Was he in a maintenance bay? He had no idea.

"The drugs are expensive enough," another replied, "You want to add that to the cost? Just shoot this bastard up and get him going. There's plenty more where he came from."

“Well, it’s better than nothing. We’ve gotta match those genetic freaks somehow. I heard they can regenerate from exposure to fallout.”

“Yeah, so can these things. It takes at least ten years to grow one of those mutants. We can just get these guys from the camps.”

  
  


Spinal inserts fed happy chemicals into his system, and the machine told his damaged body to move. The pain went away, clamps he didn’t know were there released his limbs, and he shuffled forward, out of a large metal frame.

“Alright, he’s working,” one voice said, “I’ll run through diagnostics, then we’ll go on break.”

A flurry of symbols went by, displaying readouts for weapon systems, status on implants, levels of chemicals and nanobots, stem cell generators, osteogenic stimulators, vascular regenerators, bioregenerative field emitters, and a whole host of other things, all without any letters.

“We’re green across the board,” the other voice said, then after a pause, added, “You think they’ve got any more pizza in the break room?”

  
  


The soldier kept moving until he saw the reflection.

It was like a gorilla in an armored spacesuit, minus the helmet. The body was sealed inside a metal exoskeleton, with life support to keep the grunt going. There was a wetsuit over the body under the armor, designed to keep the remaining organic parts from being damaged by the moving parts. At certain points there were openings, for metal welded to the skin, anywhere the body was falling apart on the outside and integrated with the exoskeleton.

Weapon mounts were bolted to the arms, shoulders, and back. It was a fierce creature.

He blacked out when he finally recognized what that red blinking mass was where the helmet should have been.

  
  


Time kept skipping, and their conversation remained mostly the same, only the names changing. They started as ones he knew, then devolved into more and more foreign factions.

“We’ve got a new drug cocktail to install.”

“Yeah, yeah, hold on...god, my head’s  _ killing _ me…”

“I told you not to do shots last night. You  _ knew _ we had work today.”

“Fuck off.”

“While I’m doing that, keep an eye on his vitals.”

“Can’t we tank grow these things now?”

“You’re thinking of the accelerated growth clones.”

“Those are the ones that age faster than normal, right?”

“Yeah. They don’t do well with the regenerators and chemicals we’ve got. They’re good for getting a bunch of warm bodies in the field, but they don’t last long. They make good machine gun fodder. Or tac nuke fodder.”

  
  


He didn't remember the nuclear exchanges. He didn't remember the cease fire. At least not enough to stop him. All he remembered was deployment with a unit of cyberzombies to the west coast.

West coast of what? There were a lot of those between here and there.

Where was here?

When was here?

The American didn't know.

He forgot a lot of things in fact.

He knew he was American, where he came from, but he didn't know much else. The wires they'd crossed, the machine in his brain, they kept it away from him.

His identity.

So he clutched those two flags tightly in the secret places of his mind, those flags that had been on his shoulder and in his dreams. The UN and the US, the only things he knew.

Or was it three flags?

He found himself muttering things, old codes, unit numbers, even a song.

Just bits and pieces of the song, of that mysterious third flag.

"' _ Tis my great delight to march and fight like a New York Volunteer… _ "

He didn't know what he'd been doing a lot of the time. The number of flags on his armor grew, from ECON, to Chinese, to old flags he scarcely recognized, to new rags he didn't recognize. Someone had killed the ECON handler and took the controls, or something happened back home and the handler changed allegiances, both necessitating repainting. When the handler died or passed on the controls, someone else put a new flag on him.

  
  


He thought things had stabilized. He figured he was in South Africa. They spoke English. All the burned calendars in the rubble said 2053. That was fine, wasn't it? He hadn't lost any more years.

He just wished someone would stop giving him orders.

He just wished someone would give him orders.

He just wished someone would stop giving him orders.

He just wished someone would give him orders.

He just wished someone would stop giving him orders.

He just wished someone would give him orders.

The machine hummed happily to itself, content in it's control of the UN trooper.

  
  


He had a few lucid moments here and there, remembering the various factions, the people he’d been sent against, then there was one big one.

He was alone, at night. Standing in the burning remains of a camp, his gun arm leveled at a dead target.

It was a lucid moment. He didn't know what happened. Had he been fighting someone?

He recalled something about a gang of bandits…yeah, that was it. They found him and some others, and...and… they’d taken the handler equipment, then there was some sort of fight…

He scanned the area.

His sensors detected a number of other cyberzombies in the area. The handling equipment had been destroyed.

Standard procedure said to return to base. Where was base?

Wait a minute…

The machine in their brains analyzed patterns.

It wasn’t something wrong with the handling equipment that had set them off. A new beacon had been activated. GPS was long gone, but inertial guidance told them where it was supposed to be. 

It was a proper ECON beacon, told them to kill the bandits and report to base.

_ Report to base, _ said the machine, and all moved.

  
  


He was marching with the others, the other cyberzombies, when he passed a roadsign that said " _ thanks for visiting Seattle, come back soon! _ "

  
  


West coast indeed.

  
  


They traveled through areas bathed in radiation. Their support systems worked overtime, and he thought something fell off. He hoped it wasn't important. Or organic.

The unit passed on.

One by one they started to be picked off by random raids, accidents, all sorts of things. A dozen fell to half. They salvaged the others and kept moving.

  
  


Then a UN GEV appeared in their path.

It had been repainted several times. The vehicle was worn out and did not make any of the right sounds as it moved.

The cyberzombies raised their machine guns, their missiles expended long ago.

A soldier stood at the gun of the GEV, the NBC armored bubble was missing from the weapon.

They pulled the weapon around and swept it across the formation.

It did not release bullets, instead the barrel flashed, and all the zombies just froze.

  
  


The American's HUD, the machine in his brain...it all just shut down.

He had emerged from the pool.

He fell to his knees and pulled off his helmet.

The air was sweet and fresh, free of radiation and ash as far as he could tell.

There was nothing but silence for a moment. Sweet silence.

The people around him were no longer blurs. They were distinct outlines. On the highway around him, half a dozen cyberzombies were removing their helmets and blinking in the sunlight. Men and women all bearing various kinds of wounds.

The soldiers now emerging from the GEV wore old UN uniforms.

The American realized his face was hurting.

He looked down at the red visor, and at the reflection. He let out a shriek of horror, throwing the helmet away.

He shrieked another cry of alarm and pain as he saw the other parts of the suit attached to him. He yanked the guns off his wrists, and tried to snap off the shoulder launchers. Failing that, he tried to pull off anything he could, many times pulling at his flesh.

The soldiers moved around, quickly attending to each former zombie.

One man rushed up to him and quickly grabbed the American's hands, "no, no! You'll hurt yourself!"

"Get me outta this thing, god damn it, get me outta this thing!" The American shrieked, his voice cracking and squawking from years of monotone use.

"It's okay! It's okay! You'll be fine! We'll get it off, I promise! Just stay calm!"

They were able to get the zombies aboard their hovercraft. They had to sedate several after they'd had to keep one from shooting herself.

  
  


The American ended up in a care center of some kind. He'd expected to be airlifted to a state hospital or a military base, but this was a smaller Washington state hospital. And it looked like it had taken a hit during the war.

The medics and doctors were nevertheless able to pull the weapons off, remove several implants, and managed to disable the machine in his brain. He was finally able to sleep normally.

This he did almost immediately after the last circuit was disabled.

When he awoke, he found they'd cut him out of much of the armored suit. But not all of it. Some of the skeletal framework remained, though at least his frightful appearance looked a little more human.

The bed had to be reinforced.

His face was still a mess, still virtually unrecognizable. The years of combat had damaged much of his flesh, and the frame was holding what was left together. He still had to wear the undersuit between the skin and the armor.

The docs told him the bad guys grafted machinery and technology throughout his body designed to keep his bone marrow alive, adding on a second nervous system, metabolism, and everything needed to keep some poor brainwashed kid from melting. And that machinery needed to be fueled, repaired, and contained. The fragile body, especially shredded by damage, couldn't last out in the radiation fields without the injections of iodine, stem cells, nanites, and a host of other drugs and chemicals. It kept the bone marrow alive and kept the healing process going rapidly. Not enough to fix him completely of course, just to keep moving forward into radiation and machine gun fire without question.

His DNA was completely shredded, so heavy genetic modifications were made to his existing physiology to not only keep it working, but to keep up with and support the artificial systems.

There were inserts on the spinal column, the medium cubital veins, backs of the knees, and around major arteries.

That wasn't to mention the body parts that had been removed, such as his hands, feet, and his ears. They'd been critically damaged after the tactical nuke, and his eardrums had burst.

They'd inserted numerous devices into his organs to keep them working. They'd replaced his heart with an artificial one that was geared for supporting physical activity and the restructured physiology. 

Parts of his bones and other organs had been replaced as part of the grafting procedure, either damaged or unable to keep up with the new systems.

Repairs, damage, replacement, those were the words the engineers of ECON, UN, and all factions who would use cyberzombies would use to describe the biology of their victims.

Repairs, damage, fuel, as if they were just machines. Cold, logical, not even clinical. It was more the language of a machine shop than a hospital.

But they never meant to save their patients.

As the war dragged on, there had been few factions that did not use cyber slaves. Whether they be POWs, political prisoners, or simple criminals, once one faction had done it the precedent had been set.

When the tactical, then strategic nukes were utilized, they needed to keep their soldiers from disintegrating, and needed loyal soldiers who would march into machine gun fire, radiation fields, and do it without protest.

Humanity had gone insane if that wasn't evidenced by what they'd been doing for the last century. This was only a logical step in a long string of dominoes.

It didn't matter what insignia they wore, it didn't matter who made them. The recently dead, the dying, the walking wounded, prisoners, volunteers, anyone they could get was at risk of being brought in. There really were no "good guys" or "bad guys" anymore. Both used the same immoral weapons that fed people like the grunt into the meat grinder.

Many of the "repairs" were asymmetrical. Any scans revealed many repairs were at an odd angle, as he hadn't been facing ground zero when the bomb detonated, and there had been several obstacles in the way. Radiation of all kinds had odd ways of getting around. It could kill in minutes or thirty years, but these kinds of levels in previous years had been lethal. Not any more.

They had the technology. They could rebuild their soldiers, better, faster, and stronger.

The gears of the meat grinder rang. The clockwork of a senseless industrial war ticked away, each tick ten thousand innocent lives.

  
  


In order to keep him alive, conscious, and healing after disconnecting the circuits in his brain, after rescue, the doctors had him on an intense cocktail of painkillers and medications. The cyberzombies were not made with comfort in mind, and they'd disconnected pain sensors in order to keep the bodies functional. In fact they had to keep several of those modifications intact in order to keep him well.

When he was coherent enough, a doctor asked, "Can you tell us who you are soldier? Can you tell us your name?"

The American struggled to remember, and to keep his hands away from his head, but nothing came. A few more fragments, memories of childhood, and a few more things.

"I'm sorry sir, I can't. I'm an American, from New York...could you contact my unit? I remember I was in the 3rd...3rd…”

A spark of memory flashed, and a memory came back, “3rd Infantry Division...US Army, 3rd Infantry Division, 3rd battalion, 18th Mobile Infantry, attached to the 2nd New UN Afghanistan task force."

Ironic he could remember that but not his own name.

A fragment of word association flashed, and he recalled a bar story of a Marine who was once so tired he forgot he had a first name and had to consult a comrade to figure out who's name was written on a board.

The doctor grimaced. "You're another John Doe case then."

He realized this was another tough case. It was extremely difficult to tell where the former cyberzombies came from, or who they were, especially if they were in a fugue state.

"the war is over, Mr. Doe. The New United Nations are something else now. What you knew... collapsed. The old United States are different as well."

The former infantryman furrowed his brow and winced, "collapsed? I...sir, isn't there someone from the army I can talk to? I need to at least report in..."

The doctor shook his head, "Mr. Doe, you don't understand. The war is over. It's been over for ten years."

"Ten years?" Doe croaked, his voice acting up again, "but...but...it's 2053!"

"No, I'm sorry, it's 2063. This must be difficult to accept...We can’t contact Washington at the moment. Are you sure there's no one else we can call? Any numbers, addresses, anyone we can contact?"

Doe was barely listening, "I...I got captured in 2046…"

He looked around the room. The language center of his brain had yet to return to normal and while he could still read numbers, letters were still shaky.

It did nothing to heal the feeling of jumping off a cliff without a parachute.

He felt tears at the edges of his eyes, and he bit one of his knuckles, "that can't be, it just can't be!"

"Mr. Doe, I know it's a lot to take in…"

The man hung his head, hands over his neck, "no, no, no…"

His voiced  _ creaked _ , like a recording on a loop.

He gagged, and touched his throat.

He felt a dim surgical scar he hadn't noticed. He'd been finding those all the time.

The doctor didn't know what to do. It never got any easier for him to deliver bad news.

"What did they do to me?" The man muttered, rocking back and forth, "what did they do to me?"

He felt tears on the edges of his eyes, and struggled to hold them in.

Sobbing would make something in his chest vibrate.

"Mr Doe…"

Doe couldn't help it, he just started crying right there. He couldn't hold it in any more.

In his mind he was still twenty years old, a twenty year old grunt completely overwhelmed by his circumstances.

"Sir, that can't be right...that just can't be!"

Perhaps it was remnants of his programming or his upbringing that had him calling every older gentleman "sir". 

Even John Doe didn't know, of course.

"I just want to go home…" he finally groaned, "I just wanna go home!"

He continued rocking back and forth as the doctor scratched his head and didn't know what to say.

  
  


After the news, John Doe ate his first solid food for the first time in what felt like years. For days he did little more than eat and sleep.

When he was deemed conscious and coherent enough, a man in an odd US uniform walked in his room.

The man sat down at the chair by the side of the American's bed, and looked over a clipboard.

"Mr. Doe, I'm with the Montana Army HRC."

"Montana Army?" Doe asked, "Jesus H Christ, what happened while I was gone?"

"Quite a lot, in fact. Frankly we didn't expect our faction to last that long after everything that happened. There's a lot of official US groups out there, however, we're hoping to rebuild and reintegrate everything back--"

Doe laughed almost hysterically, "rebuild? Are you crazy? The war destroyed everything! They said there's no USA left! Everything's gone!"

He chuckled slightly, and his voice fell, "everything's gone…"

The officer's eyes widened, "oh no, not exactly! That may have been true a few months ago, but things have changed."

He held a pencil in his hands, looking uncomfortable, "Mr. Doe, do you remember…"

He grimaced, "are you aware...do you know humans are…"

He sighed, "Mr Doe, a few months ago we made contact with an extraterrestrial species known as Vulcans."

Doe blinked. "You're kidding."

"No, I am not, Mr Doe."

The officer explained the warp flight that got their attention, the first landing, the aid the Vulcans were offering. Relief supplies, staff, and equipment to rebuild the planet and heal it's scars.

Doe looked at himself glumly, "I don't think they can give me what I want."

"That's part of what I was coming to talk to you about Mr Doe. We're trying to contact people's families, trying to get everyone back together."

Doe gave what little he had, such as his unit information, and the man left.

  
  


A few days later, a satellite had been reactivated and the TV in his room was finally getting some signal. Reruns of whatever DVDs someone had been able to save from a TV station, but it was innocuous and gentle. Enough to keep the voices, and whatever was left of the machine out of his brain.

He'd been fixed on whatever it was when the door opened.

"Mr. Doe?" A nurse asked, "there's someone here to see you."

"Me?" Doe asked, "who'd want to see me?"

"She says she's your sister. Would you be willing to meet with her?"

The male nurse looked down the hall, "she's pretty insistent."

Doe sighed. He still didn't remember anything.

"Send her in I guess."

_ Probably the wrong person… _

  
  


A few minutes later, a woman a few years older than Doe walked into the room and halted.

He was still uncomfortable at other's discomfort at his disfigurements.

"Hello." He said, waving.

The woman was silent, wide-eyed, but she did not retreat. She walked forward.

He studied her, and something may have clicked, but nothing specific. It was so frustrating, and she looked horrified.

He looked away, "they call me John Doe. They say I've got amnesia. I don't know who it is you're looking for...you probably have the wrong room."

"No, no I don't think I do." The woman said, choking out a laugh. "Hello, Lewis."

He looked up at her, "I'm sorry, I--"

"Lewis...it's me!" She said a little desperately, coming to his bedside, "it's Alex!"

  
  


A spark in his mind.

  
  


"Al...ex?" He muttered.

She studied his injuries, the implants, and still looked horrified. But perhaps not at him.

She looked crestfallen too, "Lewis...you really don't remember, do you? Alex. Alexandra Hayes."

She took in his scarred head, the artificial skin grafts. There were no sutures, instead non invasive stitches held together anything that wouldn't stick.

"Al…" he muttered again, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember, I…”

Tears trickled down the sides of her face, "my god, Lewis...is it really you?"

"I don't…" he held up his arms, twitching his mechanical fingers, "I don't know! Who am I? I don't know anything! I'm a damned cyberzombie, Al!"

She hugged him right there.

"Ow, ow, ow!" He moaned.

"No, it’s you alright."

  
  


Sparks.

  
  


He hugged her back hesitantly, "Al, have you  _ seen _ my face? I could be some other guy!"

She sat back, and wiped some tears away, smiling, and keeping down sobs herself. "No, Lewis. I know you."

"How do you know, Al?" He demanded, "how do you know?"

Alex laughed.

"No one's called me Al since you left."

  
  


A small fire.

  
  


Lewis blinked.

_ Lewis  _ blinked again.

_ Lewis Hayes  _ blinked a third time.

  
  


The flame turned into a furnace.

Lewis grabbed his sister in a tight bear hug, "Al!"


	2. They Called us the Advancing Dead

In the opening of this new decade, with the end of the Romulan War, and the founding of the United Federation of Planets, it makes it easy to forget the century that's quickly falling out of living memory, yet formulated the base of our modern society.

We have built so much since Private Lewis Hayes went to war so many years ago; we have largely eliminated hunger and poverty, we have gone to the stars, settled strange new worlds, encountered new civilizations, exploring farther than we could have imagined even a few decades ago. We have fought several conflicts to preserve what we have built, shoulder-to-shoulder with new friends and allies we have made along the way. On this account we prefer to forget the nightmare and trauma born of the 21st century.

The Third World War is frequently dismissed as a blotch on our historical record, a shameful and yet inevitable stepping stone to greater glory, especially among certain scholars I need not name. They believe that the war must be respectfully remembered, but only at a distance. Few want to remember the brutality and destruction that is still so close and intimate. We are so proud of how far we have come, and we forget the influence the 21st century has had, wishing instead to sweep it under the rug rather than acknowledging the advances and nightmares alike. 

Much of the foundation of modern society were a result of this war, and the 21st century as a whole; our own United Earth countries were formed out of the remains of the factions that were still standing. Our rapid rise back to an industrialized world in mere decades was done through Vulcan help, but also the technologies developed between the Eugenics Wars and World War III. 

Unlike the projections made of the 20th century conflicts, there were no mass exchanges of strategic nuclear weapons. Ballistic missile defenses had greatly improved, and the capability of ICBMs had changed. Saturation of a defense system could get weapons through, but nowhere near the previous expected quantities. By the time the larger powers were involved, they had yet to find a way for large quantities of warheads to survive.

Thus, the nuclear winter experienced was relatively minor, and the radiation again relatively limited. It was not the nightmare so many had feared. The living did not envy the dead. As with the Second World War, much of the devastation was the result of the superweapons of the last war made common: powered combat armor, armored vehicles, and genetic engineering.

Few try to remember how scared we were during the war, how shocked, hurt, and alone we felt. I remember growing up, how people I knew complained about the Vulcans holding us back, seemingly forgetting why we worked with them in the first place. We gladly accepted Vulcan aid because our world was in ruins; we  _ needed  _ the supplies they offered, the foods, medicines, and clothing. My own family can thank a Vulcan doctor for our survival.

We weren't just outstretching a hand, we had frightened ourselves with our viciousness, we were in ruins, and we needed help. The billions dead had shown us yet again the lie of Dulce et Decorum est.

  
  


The war was terrible, fought over causes far less righteous than WWII. All that was left were the victims screaming in agony. Children, men, women, people of the entire world suffered and there was no victory, no true success. Just an end to the fighting.

We cannot dismiss our sins, we cannot bury them.

Nor can we afford to ignore the long term impact the war had on our growth as a people.

We cannot forget anything.

We don't like to think about how many modern technologies are based on the advances made in material science during the war. Our breakthroughs in construction and manufacturing tragically contributed to the war’s destruction, but also proved invaluable to recovery. The same printers that had produced cybernetic implants, guns, and hovertanks in huge numbers were versatile enough to switch to manufacturing clothing, building materials, and tractors in the numbers needed for recovery.

We all enjoy our modern medicine, but forget, perhaps deliberately, how much of it was produced by the need to treat of survivors of nuclear attack, or by the drugs used to control the old world militaries and enhance cybernetic soldiers.

Our own hatred for genetic engineering is rooted in intergenerational trauma that will still be felt for years to come. But some of what was developed, no matter how mildly used, was vital for eliminating certain diseases and ensuring space-born colonists could still return home.

We must continue to remember the work of the astronauts and cosmonauts to maintain the pre-war off-world infrastructure through the Post-Atomic Horrors. I'm sure we can all recall the legend of how they laid down their arms during that brief but brutal orbital conflict.

Without their protection of our asteroid and lunar settlements, our fledgling spacedocks, we wouldn’t have been able to establish the Terra Nova colony, the trade empire of the Earth Cargo Service, or our initial waves of colonies in anywhere near the time it took. They brought us metals, medicine, and water vital for repairing and maintaining modern civilization, supplementing Vulcan aid and bringing us back to self reliance.

We so often dismiss the efforts of our slowships, but they began our status as an interstellar power.

I can still remember my grandfather talking about the first transmissions from the first slowship to return from deep space after First Contact; the NASA starship  _ Scylla _ .

Imagine what it took for _ Scylla _ and her compatriots, all names well-known but unappreciated, to continue on as they received the transmissions of a world gone mad, years into their decades-long slower-than-warp flights. They gave up their lives on Earth, knowing hibernation systems and time dilation would only save so much, and now wondered if they even had a world to return to. 

Like the astronauts they were however, they continued their work, knowing the transmissions were years out of date and they could do nothing. They continued their observations, mapping, and scientific studies, and continued to transmit their findings in hope.

Imagine their surprise when only a few years from home, they picked up strong transmissions reporting first contact with an alien race.

_ Scylla _ and her crew, first and slowest starship to reach another star, found herself returning not to a barren world, nor a subjugated home, but instead a scarred, yet humbled planet welcoming them with open arms, and thanking them for their years of service. They brought information and scientific data far beyond what we could find with Earth-based telescopes, mapping out our local neighborhood and paving the way for the first wave of colonies.  _ Scylla _ 's crew, and their fellows, formed the basis of the Earth Cargo Service, thanks to their experienced crews, navigational data, and space-worthy hulls that could accept warp drives. How much of our interstellar traffic are still of the DY-type?

Many might wonder why anything related to the ancient DY-100s would be of any use, why the DY-types lasted so long. Those old reliable starships were based on designs from before the war, data, schematics, and knowledge preserved by our astronauts through the Post-Atomic Horrors. We didn’t have the resources to immediately design brand-new reusable spacecraft in 2063, thus a major reason why the  _ Conestoga _ was designed to be disassembled. The information preserved by our outposts beyond Earth returned to us the ability to field proper interplanetary and interstellar vessels that would have taken decades to recover otherwise. DY-250s, DY-430s, and DY-500s are still flying, still servicing Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and Sirius, and still transporting colonists to deep space. We take them for granted, but they are a symbol of the best the 21st century could produce. 

We see the mid 21st century in quite a negative light, but these men and women, the staff of  _ Scylla _ ,  _ Leviathan _ ,  _ Dawn _ ,  _ Starfire _ , and all the others came from exactly that era. Many of them came back to find their nations were gone, or reformed. They sacrificed everything, knowing they'd be gone decades, gazing out with a light their superiors had lost a long time ago.

Our humble slowships, and those astronauts who protected our space infrastructure, were vital in turning our gazes skyward again. They were cut from the same cloth as those men and women who nearly destroyed the globe. The asteroid mines, lunar factories, and Lagrange colonies they protected provided us the vital supplies needed to pull us back on our own two feet, and the slowships gave us hope. Hope, practicality, and a way to face that frightening challenge of the gravity well.

The Vulcans may have held back technologies from us, but people forgot what we did have to be proud of.

The slowships came back telling us of new wonders, of scientific research and bounties to be discovered. Those brave men and women sacrificed everything to show us that the universe could be faced.

Once upon a time they were all we had. All we had to face this new reality that we weren't alone. And they faced the wonders and threats with a grin and a calm demeanor.

That meager handful of DY-200s, 225s, prospectors, research vessels, and explorers, they were our only starships and the only ones who knew what it was like out there.

They wrote the books on deep space exploration, mapping new territory long before any warp ship did. They commanded our first wave of warp ships, and established what are now the United Earth core systems. They were just space stations back then.

One then understands why Captain Mitchell, who had been one of the original officers aboard the  _ Scylla _ , became commander of the  _ Conestoga _ and the Terra Nova expedition. Back in those days, Terra Nova was intended to be the crown jewel; resources are one thing, but we all know the value of an M-class planet.

  
  


We’ve all seen the footage of Global Defense Command Hawk fighters and ECS armed merchantmen in battle during the Kzin Wars, with old-style atomic warheads and laser cannons, but it’s hardly acknowledged that those weapons, and those fighters were developed during the war. Many of the men and women operating those spacecraft learned their trade from battles in Earth orbit, were from the ranks of the slowships, or gained experience in conflicts fought from the Pacific to France. Cybernetic soldiers like Lewis Hayes were among their ranks, their skills and enhancements making them highly-sought after. As any Kzinti veteran can attest, they dramatically underestimated our combat ability, and our handfuls of cargo vessels, explorers, and meager warships proved to be far fiercer than anticipated.

Without the hard-earned knowledge and attitudes of those veterans, astronauts, and cyborgs, without their experience gained in discovering how to fight in space, I highly doubt the  _ Enterprise _ ’s expedition into the Expanse would have met with success, or that we would have survived the Romulan War.

  
  


The 21st century was filled with blood, but also with hidden gems, and a profound impact on how we think.

We saw what we were capable of, what we could do to boys like Hayes, how far we could push our creative destruction. We saw terror, we saw fear, we suffered under the weapons we had spent a century meticulously creating. 

As a society, we vowed to change, to pull ourselves back from the brink, to say "no more", and decided to put aside our petty squabbles.

The forming of United Earth was not making the world safe for democracy, this was not defeating the Axis, this was a united effort by a few courageous people, handfuls of people all over the world, who thought they were only a few drops in the bucket, who realized that they could make a difference.

Everything the old leaders told them, the lies, bitterness, apathy, and hatred they encouraged, they just said " _ no _ ".

Kindness and empathy, feelings that had evaded us for so long, worked their way into politics at just the right time.

Lewis Hayes is alive today because of it. In the wake of the war, automated equipment had to be deactivated, and several countries decided it would be easier or less embarrassing to simply exterminate the cyberzombies, cyberslaves, the augmented supersoldiers and accelerated-growth clones. But many refused, and found technology capable of rehabilitating Lewis and his compatriots.

Hatred, violence, and anger are still within us, make no mistake. The war showed us lessons we must never forget; we must think on what is worth fighting for, we must hold onto our humanity with both hands, and we must remember how close we can be to savagery.

Lewis Hayes is one of the few cybernetically altered soldiers left from the war, and one of the few to have been both a cyberslave and cyberzombie. They expect his lifespan to be indeterminate. The seventeen years he lost appear to have been more than made up for. He has numerous children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. He is no monster. His children remember his scarred face not as a nightmare, but simply as their father's face. He has served in the ECS, Starfleet, and the Federation Merchant Marine, where, like many of the other cyborgs, his abilities have come in handy.

But as healed as he is, it was still our hands that created the cyberzombies. Our minds, our technology, we were responsible. Lewis and his compatriots still face prejudice for what was done to them, even so many years later, despite all their service. We  _ must _ keep that in mind as we step into this new era of the Federation. We  _ must _ remember that the world that produced the cyberzombies also produced people like Lewis Hayes, innocent men caught up in terrible events, like Captain Mitchell, heroes willing to sacrifice everything, like Zefram Cochrane, geniuses who could change the world for the better.

Our ancestors thought themselves advanced, people like Lewis's family, with children of their own. But when it came to conflict, our great creative capability was turned toward destruction, and we nearly destroyed ourselves. We must remember the cost of arrogance and stupidity. We must remember who we once were, who we could so easily become if we're not careful.

We must not wash our hands of the conflict, but we must not cling to some false image either; we must instead forgive ourselves for what was done, acknowledge the rights and the wrongs, and let our anger go.

There may not be any Vulcans around next time to save us.

  
\- Excerpt from the foreword of Maxen Griffiths’ _ They Called us the Advancing Dead _ , University of Tranquility Press, 2162

**Author's Note:**

> FYI, for those who may be wondering, this story does have a connection to my other story, "Starfleet Regulation 2884.3". It is not required reading.


End file.
